Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Texas Governor Rick Perry won
emergency passage of proposals including mandated sonograms for
women planning abortion and a requirement for voters to show
picture identification this year, even as lawmakers grappled
with education funding and short-changed schools by $4 billion.

Critics say Perry’s agenda diverted legislators from
pressing issues such as school aid and tax changes. Supporters
such as Texas Right to Life Director Elizabeth Graham applaud
his focus on such issues as abortion.

“Perry is very sympathetic,” Graham, whose nonprofit
group is based in Houston, said by telephone. “He realizes that
aborting 1.5 million Americans a year is not just a social issue
but also an economic one.”

The 61-year-old Republican says his agenda for the second
most-populous U.S. state mirrored the priorities of most Texans,
including limits on airport pat-downs and banning local
governments from blocking federal immigration law enforcement.
Neither measure passed. Texas’s Legislature meets for 140 days
every other year, unless the governor calls a special session.

Bread-and-butter work by lawmakers to improve schools and
overhaul the tax code should have come first, say critics
including state Senator Leticia Van De Putte, head of the upper
chamber’s Democratic Caucus. Joined by other Hispanic
legislators, she also condemned Perry’s emergency bill to ban
so-called sanctuary cities.

Deflecting Attention

“Governor Perry deflected attention away from the major
flaws in his governorship, which was that the failings of his
tax reform in 2006 created a huge shortfall in Texas’s budget,”
said Tom Smith, executive director of Public Citizen’s state
office in Austin. Without the distraction of social issues Perry
created, “more people would be asking whether that tax relief
basically bankrupted the state,” Smith said.

Under pressure from federal courts demanding more equitable
school funding, Texas revised how it pays for education through
high school in 2006. The state enacted laws to cut local
property taxes and expand a levy on business income. While the
recession crimped state revenue in 2008 and 2009, companies
using loopholes avoided paying as much as forecast.

Perry, the governor since 2000, said in May he would
“think about” a bid for the Republican presidential
nomination, after lawmakers passed the two-year state budget.
His advisers have indicated he may announce his intentions by
the end of this month.

“The governor focused on issues that the people cared
about,” spokesman Mark Miner said on Aug. 6. “Sanctuary cities
was a major topic in the governor’s race last year and he’s
disappointed that the legislature didn’t act.”

Employment Growth

If he runs, Perry’s main campaign theme likely will stress
job creation, said Cal Jillson, who teaches politics at Southern
Methodist University in Dallas. More than 1 million jobs have
been added to nonfarm payrolls in Texas since Perry took office.

While the Legislature was in session, Perry focused on
social issues popular with more conservative Republicans rather
than looking for ways to boost school and university funding,
said Harvey Kronberg, who has followed the Legislature in Austin
since 1989 as publisher of the Quorum Reporter newsletter. Perry
called for a special session in June so legislators could pass a
school-finance bill.

School funding fell about $4 billion short of previously
mandated levels, Kronberg said. Enrollment in primary grades
through high school is projected to increase by 80,000 students
a year through fiscal 2013.

‘Executive Malpractice’

“For the first time, we aren’t funding enrollment growth
in our public schools,” Kronberg said. “To declare sonograms
an emergency and never once mention the state’s structural
budget deficit is executive malpractice.”

Democrats, who hold 61 of 181 legislative seats, complained
about Perry’s emergency items, including his June special-session proposal to restrict invasive security checks by
Transportation Security Administration personnel at airports.

“I don’t like TSA pat-downs either, but I don’t think that
is the most pressing item in Texas,” said Van De Putte, a San
Antonio Democrat. “Our priorities are very different between
what he puts on the agenda as emergency items and what I think
should be an emergency, which is financing education.”

Perry’s critics don’t give the governor credit for taking
principled stands that often are at odds with public opinion,
said Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of Empower Texans, a
nonprofit group in Austin that promotes limited government. He
cited Perry’s 2007 mandate to require Gardasil vaccinations for
sixth-grade girls to protect against human papillomavirus, a
common sexually transmitted disease that can cause cervical
cancer. The order was blocked by lawmakers.

Legislative Motives

“If he was only motivated by politics and which way the
wind is blowing, he never would have opened that whole can of
worms,” Sullivan said. The Legislature stepped in when it
became clear that Perry’s friend and lobbyist, Mike Toomey, had
worked for Merck & Co., the producer of Gardasil.

“No one thought that was good politics, but Perry believed
it was the right policy,” Sullivan said.

Perry has been supported by the prolife community since he
served as lieutenant governor, said Graham. The lieutenant
governor in Texas presides over the Senate, setting its agenda
and naming committee members and leaders.

“He structured the committees to facilitate the passage of
prolife bills,” Graham said. When lawmakers proposed prochoice
bills, Perry has intervened to block their progress, she said.

“Texans expect less of their governor than people in many
parts of the country,” Southern Methodist’s Jillson said. That
“leaves the governor a lot of time on his hands to focus on
abortion, border security, school prayer and other hot-button
issues.”